Adoption of Satellite Offices in Response to a Pandemic: Sustainability and Infection Control

Abstract

The office environment has changed rapidly due to the recent COVID-19 outbreak. Companies consider various types of remote work environments to contain the spread of the virus. Among them, a satellite office is a type of remote work environment where a number of employees are allocated to their nearest office. The benefits from satellite offices are twofold: The significant reduction of travel distance also reduces the amount of carbon emission and fuel consumption. In addition, dividing employees into smaller groups significantly reduces the potential risks of infection in the office. This paper addresses a satellite office allocation problem that considers social and environmental sustainability and infection control at work. In order to evaluate the effect of different satellite office allocation, quantitative measures are developed for the following three criteria: carbon emission, fuel consumption, and the probability of infection occurrence at work. Simulation experiments are conducted to investigate different scenarios of regional infection rate and modes of transportation. The results show that adopting satellite offices not only reduces carbon emission and fuel consumption, but also mitigates business disruption in the pandemic.